![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some are born with Hello Kitty; some achieve Hello Kitty; and some have Hello Kitty thrust upon them. I find myself in the last of Malvolio's adapted categories. I went to the main co-op to buy sketchbooks and this was enough to get a free gift -- a Hello Kitty photo album. It's quite pink, with a bunch of Kitty heads on a plaid background. It's a bit of a change in my lifestyle, but I'll deal with it with reasonable equanimity.
Hello Kitty isn't the obsession here that it is in Japan, but Singaporeans try. A few years ago Limited Edition Dolls at McDonald's got Singaporeans -- who'll routinely call for queue tickets and avoid ten minute physical waits -- camping out overnight in lines. So many leaned against one store window that it collapsed, injuring several. This month's McDonald's promotion of ``jewel Hello Kitty dolls'' -- small plushes dyed green or red or other ``jewel'' colors -- hasn't set off rabid mania, possibly because it's not labelled a ``limited edition,'' though really everything in the universe except bosons is a limited edition.
Oddly -- yes, there's an oddly -- at the co-op the biggest pile of A4-size sketchbooks was black paper (in white covers, making sketchbooks look more like Ho-Hos than you'd think possible). I don't know who they expect to buy so much black sketch paper. I miss Arlene's Art Supplies down in scenic Albany.
Trivia: Shakespeare's Richard III was first made as a movie in 1911, a two-reel production. Source: Shakespeare's Kings: The Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337-1485, John Julius Norwich.
Currently Reading: A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, Jim Bishop. The day was 24 October 1963, so yes, the book has a really creepy vibe. Bishop said he finished the book -- originally a newspaper series -- the week before Kennedy's murder and didn't change a word.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 06:23 am (UTC)I'm surprised you don't buy more things on-line. I recall a while back you had a struggle finding pants. Not to say Singapore doesn't have everything you could possibly want, (and as far as Hello Kitty notebooks, things you don't,) but it seems once you find something you like, you can just order or re-order it on the Internet.
Even living here in the U. S. and in a relatively large city, I find the convenience of ordering something and having it delivered to my door wonderful.
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 06:33 am (UTC)Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 07:38 am (UTC)A good point. I'd think if you found Lee pants, or Dockers or some brand to be right, you could stick with those.
Of course, as a centaur, I haven't bought pants in years, so the subtleties of the exercise has escaped me.
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 08:22 am (UTC)No, no, I remember remarking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
orv a few months back, someone on Velar had jeans that fit that shape. I remember the caption, ``Centaurs discover pants.'' Blue jeans, even. I just don't remember the exact picture.
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 05:30 pm (UTC)http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Enrico-Russo/jeanstaur.jpg
(Google's image search and ability to search only a specific domain make a rather powerful combination.)
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 05:44 pm (UTC)There we go. I've only used Google's search-a-specified-domain engine to look through servers with severely broken search engines of their own, like snopes. Velar usually behaves reasonably well.
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 12:19 pm (UTC)Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 05:45 pm (UTC)``38 ... 54 ... 18 ... 26 ... 8 ... 8 ... 74 ... 68 ... 6 ... 32 ... ''
``Hold on, boss, I need to get more paper!''
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 08:17 am (UTC)Yeah; I'm a really bulky guy, so I want to try on everything before I commit to spending money on it. Oh, if I find one shirt that fits I'll buy others of the same size without trying them on, but I buy them all at once. (And, of course, I'm the guy who buys US$4.00 shirts to improve his wardrobe.)
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 12:18 pm (UTC)Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 05:49 pm (UTC)It's about the same on the ``tall and enormous'' side of things. Obviously what we need to do is invent a device which takes ordinary clothes and extremizes them -- take two normal pants (I'll call that 38 waist, 36 inseam) and shrink one while enlarging the other, and there we have it. All we need is some way to apply continuous homeomorphic deformations to K-mart, without attracting the suspicion of the sales clerks.
Re: Sketchbooks etc.
Date: 2004-11-09 08:12 am (UTC)Well, I never got ordering stuff online; I think in a decade of Internet activity I've had maybe a half-dozen online purchases, most of them books. Besides, sketchbooks are so simple and basic ordering them from afar seems like a waste of time and money -- also, while I will buy small stocks, I tend to forget until I run out of the old books and need a new one today, or maybe tomorrow, and I'm not buying overnight delivery on a S$4.80 pad of paper.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-09 07:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-09 08:20 am (UTC)Mind you, it's an adorable world. I'm sorry I didn't get to photograph the giant Hello Kitty Chinese Lanterns from last year.